Shanxi Clique

The Shanxi Clique, often known simply as Shanxi, was a province of the Republic of China which was ruled by the Protect the Emperor Society under Yan Xishan from 1911 to 1949. Yan Xishan modernized Shanxi, one of the poorest provinces in China, after taking it over following the 1911 Xinhai Revolution and the ensuing Warlord Era, and he became the de facto ruler of northern China. Shanxi survived a war with Yuan Shikai and remained a bastion of Qing dynasty loyalism, but Yan Xishan was defeated by Chiang Kai-shek and the Republic of China in the 1930 Central Plains War and forced to accept Kuomintang rule. In 1937, Japan invaded his lands and created the puppet state of Mengkukuo in the north, using a strip of conquered Shanxi lands to establish this Mongol monarchy. Yan Xishan would resist Japanese rule during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and he would return to power in 1945 after the Japanese surrender. However, he was defeated by the Communist Party of China in the ensuing Chinese Civil War, and the communists united China under their leader Mao Zedong.